What would you bet that "green" was needed for lights of the same? Blue would have brought the system into meltdown.

At one time plain-vanilla tray and pendant cables used green and white in various combinations for conductor identification. The allowance for leaving out green and white in multiconductor assemblies is about 12 years old.

If I follow the code correctly, nowadays you can reidentify individual conductors as equipment grounds or grounded circuit conductors in a multiconductor cable, but not the reverse. If one could not use white or green for other than these under the “old” scheme, {although 600V-rated} you’d end up with lots of worthless “spares.”

Re: Geen Wire is Not Used as an Equipment Grounding Conductor?#8085907/01/0211:00 PM07/01/0211:00 PM

Joe, this cable is commonly used by the Traffic Signal industry, and is called IMSA 19-1 (International Municpial Siganl Association, 19-1 is the cable spec).

It is a five conductor cableWhite-commonRed-red displayYelllow-yellow displayGreen-green displayBlack-spare, sometimes used in ped signals

Signal heads typically don't have a seperate equipment groudning conductor, but the mast arms are often connected to an EGD.

Many companies make a 19-1 cable, but I don't think a much of it is listed. I'm going to check on this. In fact very, very, little traffic signal equipment is listed. This causes problems with installations where the AHJ gets involved.

I'm a certified Traffic Signal Tech and have been writing a "Code Corner" column in the IMSA Journal for the 18 months.